How to Write a Fic as a Non-English Native

Everything in this blog is written without any of my quality control, so you can see how I write without quality control.

*snicker* fic... It's funny because in german "fick" means "fuck". Now, before I begin this explanation/tutorial/hints/W/e, I first have to clear some things up. My grammar is under average, and my fics still have a lot of errors in them. I want to find them all, but no one shows them to me. To be clear on something else, my knowledge of the english language is none-existent. I write absolutely everything out of feeling and I don't even know one rule of the if-rules and I don't even know how to name the past tenses. Yet, my grammar is still acceptable enough to be regarded as "readable". For someone who never grew up with the english language, this is pretty hard.

Another thing. I've got ADHD and dyslexia. Both illnesses are burdens that hinder me in writing high-quality fics. Let me first explain both. If you know both illnesses already, you can skip forward to the "---".

ADD means that your body lacks a certain hormone that controls your "attention" or better called "focus". For example, if you write your story, you concentrate yourself with 80% of your mind on the thing, while the remaining 20% take in your surroundings. Someone that has ADD isn't able to concentrate this well. His upper limit would be something like 40%. This means that he just can't focus. Imagine writing while you are on crack or something. You simply can't concentrate. Well, it also has its benefits. I can talk with three seperate people at the same time, since my concentration is so divided. The "H" in ADHD means hyperactivity. ADHD is the same as ADD with the difference that you can't keep still. You need to move SOMETHING the entire time. Your toes, your fingers or W/e.

Dyslexia means that either your skill in writing, reading, or speaking is in comparison to your IQ strongly underdeveloped. The "in comparison to your IQ" is important. Let me give you an example why. It seems normal for someone with the IQ of 60 to put 10 errors in one paragraph, but it doesn't seem normal for someone with an IQ of 120. I won't put my score in here, because I would look like I wrote this entire blog post only to brag. In my case it is writing btw. I can talk normally and reading is also OK, but my error quota in writing is just TOO DAMN HIGH!

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Now for the actual tips. As you see, I have some burdens and problems in writing, so how am I able to still write acceptable grammar? First of all, let me give you a tip. An editor and a proof-reader can negate all the points. I saw a fic that was featured lately with decent grammar and cool story. This guy had an editor. In between chapters, he wrote comments, answers to questions, authors notes and stuff WITHOUT his editor. He couldn't even form one sentence without any major mistakes. An editor can absolutely negate your worry for grammar, as long as you provide the good story idea and good story flow.

I personally am not sure what I should think of editors and proofreaders. It's like medicine. Imagine a guy that eats healthy every day and exercises. Then there's this guy that is fat and only eats fat. With medicine, they both live up to 80 years old, but what if the medicine suddenly vanishes? Then the fat guy has problems. What I am trying to say it, if you have an editor/proofreader take them. Let them help you. It improves your story extremely. The only reason why I don't have a proofreader now, is because one that I asked has a lot to do right now. As long as not your whole carreer and future as author rests on another guy, you are good to go. It should still be your story, no?

Now for the things you can do, if you don't have an editor. Let me tell you what I have.

1. somewhat decent english, so you can form sentences in an interesting manner, and have no problems to articulate yourself.
2. Word 2013
3. Grammarly (google it up)

You see how i write right now? This is how I would write without point 2 and three. I looked my text over and realized that there are a lot of missing "," and a lot of capitalization is missing. I bet there are also some typos. Word automatically capitalizes every word at the beginning of every sentences, as well as the "I"s. If you made some typos, and your typo doesn't create a new word by mistake, Word highlights that. It also highlights some gramatically incorrections ( is that even a word? ). Word is basically gives you a basis of grammar. A lot of my mistakes in this block wouldn't be there if I would just simply write this in word.

Now we come to something that makes my fics "readable". It's called Grammarly. It basically is a website that offers online-spellcheck. You can use the website/programm for 30€/month. It's quite expensive, but man this saved my ass. At the beginning of The Everlasting Drawback of Immortality, I had 10 mistakes in about 3 paragraphs that Grammarly showed me. Now they are <10 per site. Still quite a lot. Of course, this program doesn't find every mistake and it also isn't without flaw. For example "After five minutes, I went home." Grammarly would see the "after" and would take the next word with it, then would wand a comma in there. If I would blindly accept it, this sentence would look like this. "After five, minutes, I went home." Not correct, but that's one of the few flaws.

Now for what I do exactly when I write something.
1. write it with a little bit of quality. Quality is not important.
2. Word autocorrects while I write and I listen to it, mostly.
3. Let grammarly check it, and look at everything it wants to change. Accept the most things, but still look if it really is reasonable what Grammarly tells you.
4. Read slowly through the chapter, and change any typos and errors you find in there. Also, read aloud so you hear if a sentence sounds retarded or not.

Now for some general tips on story-writing. Aside from the basics (New paragraph when a new pony talks and so on) you need to look on more things. For once, give yourself an interval of lines you want to put in one paragraph, outside of a discussion. I give myself a minimum of 3 lines and a maximum of 8. Next, create your paragraphs with a theme. Don't put two important activities in one thing. Let me give you an example. Wait here, I'm searching for one.

Putting Twilight under her wing, Celestia began to tear up too. She did not want to recall the events of that day, but she had to in order to provide Twilight with an understanding of Orans’ power. They both sat together, embraced in a hug for several minutes. Celestia was glad that she could open up to someone, and Twilight was happy to have her mentor near her. She genuinely needed the closeness with another pony right now.

Some moments later, they both parted the hug and waited for the other one to break the silence. In the end, Celestia spoke up first. “I think you know now, why I didn’t want you to hear about this. It’s understandable if you do not want to be with me in this room right now. It’s alright if you want to leave.”

The first paragraph describes Celestia hugging Twilight, and what goes through her head at this time. The next one describes how they part and what Celestia says to Twilight afterwards. Don't put two important actions in one paragraph if you can divide this one huge one into two separate ones.

Next, start your sentences with different words. Let me write an example story on how NOT to do it.

"I wasn't sure what I should do. I looked over to the bucket with the red paint, and suddenly I got the idea that would probably change my future life. I walked over to the bucket and dipped my willie into it. I swung it around and created a masterful piece of art."

All four sentences began with the word I. This makes this look boring, stiff and just "grey". Let me rephrase that.

I wasn't sure what i should do. Looking over to the bucket with red paint, I got an idea that would probably change my future life. My willie was dipped into the bucket. Snickering, I swung it around and created a masterful piece of art.

Simply changing the beginning of the sentences helps a lot. It looks more colorful and you can describe multiple ways from different perspectives.

Next thing, use different words. Let me give you a wrong example again.

The hall I looked at, looked really big. The size of it alone, made me really afraid. Really concentrated looking at it, I decided to take a shit in the corner.

Really? Those reallys only look strange in there. If you want to strengthen your adjectives, use different words.

The hall I looked at, looked extremely big. THe size of it alone, made me exceedingly afraid. Terribly concentrated looking at it, I decided to take a shit in the corner.

If you don't have the necessary vocabulary of words for this, you can also use grammarly. Heck, I myself do that. For often used words, it shows you five other words you could use for it. Or just look at dict.leo or translate.google for synonyms.

To the next point, sentence length. Short sentences are ok for a while, but after an army of short sentences, this only seems boring. Try changing your style between long and short sentences. Make one or two small ones, then make one that goes over two lines with like 85 sentences combined into each other. Don't take it for law, since too much can be confusing. Try to find an equilibrium.

I think that's enough for now. Shoutout to the ONLY one that showed me mistakes in "I'm Getting Underpaid For This". I fucking want to know where my mistakes are. Where are the mistakes I can't find myself? It's like I crapped somewhere on a street, but no one tells me where it lays so I can clean it. That feeling is frustrating.

Don't take everything I said for law, since I am relatively speaking still a rather new author. I have only 3 months of writing experience. BTW the best way to improve your writing skills without writing is reading. Like I said, my first fic hat 1 positive to 13 negative votes. 2 months later, I created a new one with currently 34/2. You see what 3 months of reading can achieve. And for those of you who overread my annotation earlier.

Everything in this blog is written without any of my quality control, so you can see how I write without quality control.

If I would write like this in a story, this would be unacceptable. For those of you who read through the whole thing, you get a bonus. When/If I reach 100 followers at some point, I will write a gary-stue story with a black and red alicorn with a name like "Blazing Shadow". I really want to know how far I can get with that first impression on the fic xD.

Well, I hope I could help at least one person. BTW I think I'll start today or tomorrow on the next chapter of "WATP". I also have motivation for Spike, since I am now back in my element. ADVENTURE!

Till the next chapter or block post!